Te Ao with Moana reporter Hikurangi Jackson went with his father, Labour MP Willie Jackson, who had been invited to the UK for a traditional Oxford University debate.
Willie was the first Māori person to be invited to the oldest university in Britain to take part in the debate. The moot whether British museums were British, with Jackson arguing they were.
Zingers
Before everything started, he sat down with his son Hikurangi Jackson and talked about zingers.
Hikurangi Jackson (HJ) - What are some zingers?
Willie Jackson (WJ) - Well, you have to wait, won’t you? There’s some,
HJ - Come on, tell us.
WJ - No, I can’t do that.
HJ - Yes, you can.
WJ - No, I can’t do that. You know, everybody in New Zealand has given me this line.
HJ -What’s the line?
WJ - The line was based on what Lange said in terms of ‘I can smell the uranium coming off your breath’.
Willie is referring to former Prime Minister David Lange’s quip at the Oxford debate he argued on whether nuclear weapons were morally indefensible.
“If you hold your breath just for a moment, I could smell the uranium on it as you lean towards me,” Lange had said back in 1985.
But Willie Jackson did end up making his own quip for the night inspired by Lange’s quote: “I can smell the colonialism on your breath from here.”
Visiting the British Museum
Before he could argue that the British Museum was indeed British, the Labour MP visited it to school up on what was going to be a serious test of wits in the Oxford debate.
He met with Julie Adams, the curator of the Oceania collection there, who said the Aotearoa collection was ever growing.
“Māori taonga,[there] are about 3000 altogether in the collection and some of those date back right to the beginnings of those very first encounters between Captain James Cook and Māori people.
“Others are from right up till the present day. So we still actively collect and work with contemporary Māori artists today. So the collection is a living collection, constantly growing and changing,” Adams said.
The debate results
Of course, he did end up taking the win for his team, telling the audience only the British had the “audacity’ to take from indigenous people and call it theirs.
“British museums are very, very British because it’s very, very, very British to take from indigenous people and never hand it back.
“Who else has the audacity to arrive on distant shores, hop off their boats and declare they own everything. The British, that’s who.
“The entire cultural history of the British is stealing good ideas and culture from everyone they encountered,” Jackson said.
After being declared the winner, Willie Jackson sad: “It was just a magnificent response. You know, I was really humbled by the response, you know, young Kiwis and just about all Pākehā coming over here. There were 10 or 15 of them here coming over to give me a hug afterwards.
“It was very humbling and lovely to see. I just hope that people were proud.
“You get the haters, right. You know, they’re in my head. They’re in my head sometimes. You know, those sort of haters are what drives me because that’s why I do what I do in politics, and what I do in terms of advocating for our people and we should never, ever bow down to them.”
Watch Te Ao With Moana’s story about Willie Jackson’s full journey in the United Kingdom before the debates in the video above.